THE PRIVATE SOLDIER 
OF m^ CONFEDERACY 



JOSEPH R LAMAR 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION l!Y 



ALBERT SHAW 




"'Patriotism is but onn of the viaiiy names of duty."' 



ADDRESS 



HON. JOSEPH R. LAMAR 

OF 

AUGUSTA, GEORGIA 

DELIVERED ON 

MEMORIAL DAY, APRIL, 1902 

AT 

ATHENS, GEORGIA 



NOW REPRINTED BY REQUEST OF NEW YORK CITY FRIENDS 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

ALBERT SHAW ^ 



1908 



//4^sz^y 



Eagle Press, Brooklyn-New York 



Introduction. 



The address herewith published was delivered 
at Athens, Georgia, in April of the present year, 
1902. The day was one set apart in memory 
of the soldiers of the Confederacy. The occasion 
was a memorial service held under the auspices 
of the Daughters of the Confederacy, and the 
speaker was a man who bears a name distin- 
guished in the annals of the South and of the 
Nation, who is also himself eminent at the bar 
of his State, — Hon. Joseph R. Lamar, of Augusta, 
Georgia. It so happened that there were present 
at Athens a considerable number of people from 
other States who were spending several days at- 
tending the Conference on Southern Education, 
and among these were several scores of people 
from the Northern States. The Educational Con- 
ference adjourned in recognition of Memorial Day, 
and many of its members attended the services 
and heard Mr. Lamar's address. The Northern 
visitors were especially impressed, — not more by 



the rare felicity of its diction, the philosophical 
quality of mind it displayed, and its thoughtful 
interpretations of history, than by its timely char- 
acter and practical usefulness. They felt that it 
ought to be printed for the enlightenment of the 
North and the incitement of the South. As a con- 
sequence, the address appears in the present form. 

The surviving soldiers on both sides of the great 
civil conflict of forty years ago have long since 
learned respect and admiration for their brave op- 
ponents ; and the whole country will in future times 
ever more deeply cherish the records and traditions 
of American heroism as evinced in that great 
period, irrespective of the color of the uniform. Mr. 
Lamar shows us in this address wherein and why 
the common soldier of the Confederacy was so re- 
markable a type of manhood. Having done this 
in well-weighed words wholly free from rhetorical 
exaggeration, Mr. Lamar proceeds to show that 
his purpose is not that of a mere eulogy. He 
has analyzed the quality of American heroism 
as typified in the common soldier of the Confed- 
eracy in order to ask and answer the question, 



What now belongs to the part that should be played 
by the successors of those men of the sixties, who 
would wish to be equally true to the demands of 
patriotism ? 

His spirit in dealing with this question is well ex- 
pressed in his motto, " Patriotism is but one of the 
many names of duty." Whereupon, he takes up 
courageously the race question of the South, and 
every word he utters is a golden word of wisdom. 
It is not that within the compass of this brief 
address Mr. Lamar could develop his ideas in 
detail. But he views the race question seriously 
yet without pessimism, and in its true perspective. 
He is philosopher enough to see that there has 
been remarkable progress in the adjustment of 
relations between the races since emancipation, in 
view of the shortness of the period that has elapsed ; 
and he touches the very root of remedial policy when 
he points out the duty of the South to improve the 
status of the negro race on the agricultural and in- 
dustrial side as preliminary to the ultimate success 
of universal education and effective school training:. 
He would have the Southern landowner take pride 



in being a good landlord, and would have him 
render his negro tenantry the best and kindest ser- 
vice by enforcing upon it the proper cultivation of 
the soil. To approach our great problems of Ameri- 
can life and society, — whether Northern or South- 
ern, Eastern or Western, urban or rural, — ^in the 
light of patriotic duty, and in the broad-minded 
spirit of this address of Mr. Lamar's, is to do our 
share toward the fulfillment of a true national 
destiny. 

ALBERT SHAW. 



The Private Soldier of the 
Confederacy. 



Members of the Memorial Association, Confederate 
Survivors, Ladies and Gentlemen : 

" It is an irrepressible conflict" * * * 
" It is an indestructible union of indestruc- 
tible States." The saying of Seward was 
prophecy; that of Chase, history. In these 
two phrases are compressed the cause and 
the result of the War. 

There is nothing more exact than the 
movement of time ; yet nothing is more 
misleading than to measure the progress of a 
people by the flight of years. In the twenty 
centuries between Abraham and Christ, 
the human race stood still ; in the forty 
years between the War and this hour, rev- 
olutions, social and industrial, have so 



crowded one upon another that the mind 
is staggered in its effort to comprehend the 
marvelous changes which have been made. 
It is an anomaly that the nation is further 
advanced than the individuals who compose 
it. The body politic lives in the wholly 
modern atmosphere created by these revo- 
lutions, but the individual retains the im- 
press received in his youth. While, rela- 
tively speaking, we are further from the 
War than our ancestors had come since 
Columbus, yet the struggle of i860 sur- 
vives in our memories to-day as the great 
and distinct event of our life. 

Before me are those who fought and 
suffered in that Titanic contest ; with them 
sit their children, and nearby their grand- 
children. In these three generations there 
must, of necessity, be differences in the 
points of view. While it is asking too 
much to think that those who took part in 



the conflict can view it from ihe placid seat 
of impersonal criticism, yet never before 
have the actors in a great and bloody 
drama so speedily approached the plane 
from which calm and dispassionate judg- 
ment may be pronounced upon the tre- 
mendous events in which they participated. 
War at the best is a horror. Civil War is 
a hell. But even Civil War comes finally 
to be judged at the bar of History, and the 
passions and resentments of even such a 
strife yield finally to the touch of time. 
Every true American must long for the 
day when the man of the North and the 
man of the South can sit down together, 
and in frankness and candor, discuss this 
stupendous event in our history. 

We come of a blood that is not ignorant 
of civil strife. The Wars of the Roses 
rent and tore the vitals of English society 
for fifty years, but rare indeed is the man 



in that cultured country who can even tell 
the names of those who wore the blossom 
of York, or those who fought for the flower 
of Lancaster. All its bitterness, its hate, 
its cruelty, have vanished with the vanish- 
ing years. It is now poetry, and the story 
is known almost exclusively from the pages 
of the great Dramatist. 

The Civil War in which Cromwell and 
Charles waged a sanguinary struggle is 
history, and judged as any other historical 
event. The veriest English Tory, the 
most radical non-conformist, is able dispas- 
sionately to consider the claims of Crom- 
well as leader, — the folly of Charles as 
King. Every act of valor, every heroic 
charge, every sacrifice in that struggle has 
been gathered into the casket of England's 
jewels. Liberal and Conservative alike 
honor the historic names, whether Whig 
or Tory, Cavalier or Roundhead. 



Long before a half century had passed 
it was possible for an American and a 
Briton to discuss in kindhness and frank- 
ness the Declaration of Independence, the 
Stamp Act, Valley Forge and Yorktown, — 
the Mother Country glorying in our Wash- 
ington and claiming her full share of the 
honor reflected by our Continental troops. 

And I think the day has come in which 
we, too, whether from the North or from 
the South, may begin to view our War as 
the treasury of American manhood, as a 
mine in which can be found priceless and 
inexhaustible stores, illustrating the hero- 
ism of the American people, and shedding 
resplendent honor upon the Nation. Can 
we not in that spirit observe this day, and 
from the vista of forty years study "The 
Private Soldier of the Confederacy" and 
appropriate to ourselves the lesson he 
teaches ? 



It is one of the tricks of language to re- 
verse the standard of age. We call the 
early years of a people old, while the early 
years of a man are his youth. We speak 
of that as the old South, and of this as the 
new South ; and yet, in reality, it was the 
young South that entered the War. It was 
the young North with which she grappled. 
Not half the land had been cleared ; the 
forests were untouched; the railroads had 
only begun their transforming work ; we 
had not ceased to indulge in hilarious re- 
joicing as each Fourth of July reminded us 
of our recent birth as a Nation ; we still 
writhed under the criticism and irony of for- 
eign travelers recounting our crudities; the 
exuberance of youth manifested itself in all 
we did and said, and in nothing more than 
in the fact that "this conflict was irrepress- 
ible." Had we been older in wisdom and 
experience ; had we known what War was 



and its cost; had we known the price of 
even victory; had we ever imagined the 
bitterness of defeat, — the War would not 
have been. Both sides would have en- 
deavored to find some honorable escape 
from a struggle so colossal. 

But America came of age when Sum- 
ter's gun was fired. That brought us to 
our majority — to a sudden realization of 
the burdens and responsibilities of organ- 
ized society. Till then, we had known 
only the blessings of a prosperous and 
peaceful democracy, removed from the strife 
and dangers encompassing all other civi- 
lized States. War has been the greatest 
factor in History. Every people has felt 
the hand of the invader. Upon every land 
conquering hosts have marched. And the 
suffering, the passion, the victory, the de- 
feat, have entered into the very bone and 
sinew of the human family. Until i860. 



we knew nothing of it. Peace or victory 
had been our only portion — the Indian 
Wars, the Revolutionary War, that of 
1 812, and that with Mexico, were mere 
skirmishes in which individual prowess had 
manifested itself, and where the victories 
which crowned our arms had but served to 
intensify our self-confidence. They left 
neither scar nor burden ; they had not taxed 
our power, but only fed our pride. 

Every other people had paid the cost and 
felt the agony of War. To most of the 
tribes of men it had been almost a thing 
of course to live in sound and sight of bat- 
tle; from cradle to grave to witness smok- 
ing ruins, and see the desolation which lies 
in the wake of armies. Even yet, the North 
knows nothing of the real horrors of War. 
It has countless millions hving in a bound- 
less prosperity who have never thrilled at 
the deep roar of cannon threatening their 



homes; its highways have never trembled 
with the tread of martial hosts, except as 
they marched to the tune of airs befitting the 
pomp and circumstances of victors. On this 
Continent it is only in the South that the 
sober and sombre effects of War have been 
felt, and worked their way into the warp 
and woof of our life. But in i860 we 
knew none of these things, and men of the 
same blood, speech and religion girt them- 
selves for the greatest struggle of the great- 
est age the world has seen. 

It was the tremendous, overshadowing 
event in our history. It rises as a moun- 
tain out of the plain of national life. It 
must ever be the great historic fact among 
us. It will always be " The " War, with- 
out adjective, — without word of explana- 
tion. 

It will not do simply to indulge in ex- 
travagances. Let us see wherein it was 



so great. The South was purely agricul- 
tural. She had no manufactories ; she had 
no foundries ; she had no mines ; no ship- 
yards, no navy; no taste or experience for 
the sea, for no stories are told of a South- 
ern boy leaving home for a life on the wave. 
She had no army ; her militia served only 
as a butt of ridicule for the pen of Long- 
street and other humorists, — and yet, within 
weeks, she had organized a central gov- 
ernment, swept the seas, created an army ; 
with raw and untrained troops fought battles 
and won victories. The nations of the 
earth had been training men for centuries. 
Europe was one immense camp ; it had 
standing armies ; it had levies and reserves ; 
and yet she had never been able to organize 
and mobilize so fast as these untrained 
farmers, who, within ninety days, had fought 
a series of battles that amazed the soldiers 
of the earth. It was no mere wild abandon 



x6 



of enthusiasm. The spirit of these men 
was such as not only to carry them through 
the thrill and excitement of the charge, but 
when reverses came, and defeat hung round 
their banner, even greater heroism was 
shown. The spirit lasted not for weeks, 
but for years, and expired at last in the 
throes that come from hunger and absolute 
exhaustion. 

War is the supremest test to which a peo- 
can be subjected. Cruel it may be, — full 
of suffering it must be. But it tries as by 
fire the endurance, the courage, the forti- 
tude, the self-denial of a nation. In no 
spirit of boastfulness, but with tears for the 
brave men who stood the test, let us make 
a brief comparison between the great strug- 
gle upon this Continent and those else- 
where. 

Of the twenty decisive battles of the 
world, four were fought in the 19th 



Century. Waterloo in 1815; Gettysburg 
in 1863; Sadowa in 1866; Sedan in 1871. 
Of all battles, Waterloo is perhaps the most 
famous. Whole libraries have been written 
about it, and yet the combined losses of the 
English, Prussian and French armies in that 
tremendous conflict did not exceed the losses 
at Gettysburg, where also 70,000 men were 
engaged on both sides. Three years after 
Gettysburg, Sadowa was fought between 
the Austrians and Prussians — a quarter of 
a million men on each side — each army 
greater than the combined forces of Fed- 
erals and Confederates at Gettysburg, but 
the comparative casualties were far, far less. 
Five years later, Sedan was fought. The 
size of the armies was vastly greater than 
at Gettysburg, but again the casualties 
were incomparably less. 

The great wars of the past were between 
compact States, having narrow frontiers. 



easily patrolled ; but the Confederacy faced 
for a thousand miles on the North, the 
most prosperous people on earth; in the 
rear was an exposed coast of two thousand 
miles without a ship for its defense; be- 
tween these threatening dangers, ran, from 
Richmond to New Orleans, the longest 
battle-line of the ages. The South had a 
population of five million whites, and sum- 
moning them all to a view of what con- 
fronted her, one in every five, — not one in 
every five men, but one in every five of 
men, women and helpless infants, devoted 
himself, his all and his sacred honor to the 
God of Battle. Those who remained at 
home were not less consecrated. They 
stripped themselves and the lean land to 
the bone — even to the marrow of poverty, 
so that the four years challenge the saying 
that money is the sinew of war, for, with- 
out money, without credit, and solely by 



the magic of devoted sacrifice, armies were 
maintained and the struggle continued. 
And, when it ended, they had not even the 
widow's mite with which to buy in the mar- 
kets of the world, but only trunks and 
baskets full of sleazy paper as vouchers for 
a small part of the money losses. 

In whatever aspect we consider it, the 
bigness, the incomparable bigness of this 
War, overtops every other in History. 
Never before had three and a half million 
soldiers been in battle array, — and if we 
turn to the battle fields and realize that the 
killed in both armies amounted to a half 
million; that besides, a million men were 
wounded or disabled; that only one of 
every three that went from the South re- 
turned home sound in limb and body, we 
are tempted to weep that they poured forth 
so lavish a libation of courageous en- 
durance, — not once, but in innumerable 



instances surpassing that most famous and 
reckless charge of the Light Brigade, where 
forty-nine out of every hundred were left 
on the field. For in our War, 75 Regi- 
ments of the Confederacy, and an equal 
number in the Federal army, showed 
heavier losses than that of the Six Hun- 
dred at Balaklava. And thirty regiments 
left sixty per cent. — no, let us not say per 
cent., but rather that out of each hundred, 
sixty dead and wounded heroes were left 
upon a soil sanctified by their blood. And, 
as in the retort of battle, we continue to 
test manhood by the power to do and to 
dare, to execute and to die, the ascending 
mountain of our War's superiority over all 
others lifts its cliff-like head at Cold Har- 
bor, where occurred the most stupendous 
and appalling loss of any battle on earth ; 
and where, in the space of eight minutes, 
ten thousand Federal soldiers lay dead or 



wounded before the Confederate fire; 20 
to the second, 1,200 to the minute. 

A striking comparison between Gettys- 
burg and the other three battles is that 
Waterloo, Sadowa and Sedan were, in fact, 
decisive; Waterloo ended the Hundred 
Days and the Campaigns of Bonaparte; 
Sadowa ended the Seven Weeks War be- 
tween Austria and Prussia; Sedan prac- 
tically terminated the Franco- Prussian War 
of five months, and allowed the Germans 
to march from the Rhine to Paris. But 
Gettysburg, while in a sense decisive, was 
more than two years from Appomatox. 
Within the same week, Gettysburg was 
lost on the North and Vicksburg on the 
South. According to all the rules of War, 
this foretold the end, and by any other 
people would have been treated as final, 
and yet, with an unparalleled tenacity of 
purpose and a spirit wholly unconquered, 



the fight was kept up with undiminished 
vigor. Against odds daily increasing, and 
with the certainty of ultimate defeat staring 
them in the face, the struggle was main- 
tained. Hopeless but determined, hungry 
but cheerful ; ragged but undismayed, the 
Confederates fought on. 

It was here that their greatest triumph was 
won. Many men fight gallantly when the 
reward seems certain ; most men are heroes 
when flushed and giddy with the wine of 
success, but to follow a forlorn hope, to face 
certain defeat, this, after all is said, is the 
final test of heroism. When we remember 
the brave deeds of old, it is not of victories 
we think. It is the retreat of the Ten 
Thousand ; the Spartans at Thermopylae ; 
the Charge of the Light Brigade ; the Battle 
of Bunker Hill ; Pickett's Charge at Gettys- 
burg, — that stir the blood and make us 
proud that our humanity is capable of such 
heroic sacrifice. 



Cold indeed must be the nature that can 
study the story of these four years and read 
the Hst of terrific and awful battles following 
the defeat of Gettysburg, which does not 
thrill with pride at the indomitable courage 
displayed by these tattered and hungry 
Americans. It is only the element of pa- 
triotic courage and noble sacrifice that 
relieve war from being mere butchery and 
degradation. If anything can light up a 
field strewn with dead and dying ; if any- 
thing can still the horror of the moans of 
the wounded and gasps of the expiring it 
is the contemplation of the lofty spirit that 
filled those who fell. The cold and dispas- 
sionate historian of the future will find his 
nerves tingle and his pen kindle with un- 
wonted fire, as he describes the heroism and 
devotion of these four years. Those who 
fought against these men must feel that 
it is their supremest triumph that they 



overcame such foes, — for no louder paean 
can be heralded for the victor than that he 
was able to defeat those of his own race, 
exhibiting such qualities of heroic manhood 
as the Southern soldier of 1860-65. Great 
as was the skill in battle of those who com- 
manded, it vvas not that which protracted 
the struggle, but the stern and unswerving 
courage of those who carried the musket, 
stormed the breastworks, repelled the charge, 
and endured the privations of those awful 
days. But they who died were not the 
only heroes. Those who survived and took 
up the burden of defeat exhibited the same 
characteristics. When they returned to the 
upheaval and disorder left as an aftermath 
of the War, and faced the new and untried 
conditions, there was room to manifest the 
same spirit of courageous endurance as on 
the tented field. Once before, when an army 
of our blood had disbanded, it had been 



said that wherever you found a man noted 
above his fellows and inquired who he was, 
the answer always came back that he was 
one of Cromwell's Ironsides, — and para- 
phrasing what Macauley has written, we 
too may say that, as we look back over the 
intervening years of peace, the prominent 
figures on both sides are Survivors. The 
most successful farmers, the best mechan- 
ics, the leaders in commerce and trade, at 
the Bar and on the Bench, the leaders in 
every vocation, had been trained in that 
marvelous school of War, — and if, at one 
time, it happened that the Confederate Col- 
onel was noted for numbers in the Halls of 
Congress, it was not an accident, nor the 
mere favoritism of politics. Leaders in 
public and in private life come from those 
best trained. 

All of our theories of education would 
fail if we concluded that the type of men 



who first won the victories, and were then 
even more victorous in defeat, were an acci- 
dent. Exceptional in their achievements, 
they must have been the product of excep- 
tional causes. Trained in an unusual school, 
they were the product of special conditions, 
obtaining partly at the North, but to a 
greater degree at the South. For a gen- 
eration before the War, great issues had 
been discussed. Upon the hustings and 
around every man's fireside, men probed to 
the bottom the rights of the central Govern- 
ment, the rights of the States, the rights of 
property, and the rights of man. High 
thinking had unconsciously been fitting 
them for high living. The greatness of 
the questions discussed enlarged the mind 
and stimulated the spirit; it elevated 
that generation above the condition of 
those who only think on small things ; it 
gave them a moral fibre stronger than can 



come to those who Hve only in prosper- 
ous and piping times of peace. 

Another pecuHarity of the Confederate 
soldier, as also of the Revolutionary soldier, 
is that, in the main, he was the product of 
life in the Country. The South had no 
great cities. The army of the Confederacy 
was recruited from the ranks of men who 
had lived the independent, self-centered, re- 
sourceful life of the Southern planter. He 
was an autocrat and knew how to com- 
mand, but in learning that lesson, he had 
learned also how to obey. He demon- 
strated the value of the individual, and 
showed that a man trained in such a school 
can almost at a moment's notice be conver- 
ted into a soldier, without the necessity for 
long enhstment, and the tedious training in 
a standing army. It was the trained man- 
hood which made the soldier, and not the 
manual of arms. 



It is in unconscious recognition of this 
fact that the private soldier lives as the 
Hero of the Confederacy. Many of them 
rose from the ranks to become Generals; 
many of them, without previous training, 
went from peaceful homes to gloriously 
command large bodies ; and while no army 
ever had greater officers, no officers ever 
led better men. While there are monu- 
ments rich and precious to the leaders, and 
here and there one to mark a battle-field, 
everywhere is the shaft to commemorate 
the private soldier. Sometimes those from 
a particular village; sometimes those from 
a county ; sometimes those from a special 
city ; sometimes one with your own pathetic 
inscription, "To the Unknown Dead" — 
still everywhere they rise to the memory 
and the fame of the Private Soldier. 

We desire to preserve the memory 
of their devotion, sacrifice and bravery. 



a» 



Erecting monuments and hallowing these 
Memorial Days, is meet and proper. It is 
honorable to the living, and honoring to 
the dead. But we must not stop with 
marble shafts, nor with wreaths of flowers. 
Our truest tribute to the Confederate Soldier 
is to follow his example in performing the 
duty that lies next to us in the public serv- 
ice. We hear to-day no blast trumpeting 
us to arms; but we are confronted with 
social dangers and deep problems calling 
for our best endeavors; problems with 
which Legislatures are powerless to deal, 
and which can only be solved by the long 
drawn out patience of years and the har- 
monious action of our people. 

The Cause for which the Confederate 
fought is lost. No War ever settled 
weightier or more tremendous issues than 
those decided at Appomatox. With a pen 
dipped in blood, it was written that never 



again in this land shall human beings be 
bought and sold; and, as irrevocably, it 
was decreed that this is an indestructible 
union of indestructible States. To a rec- 
ognition of these decrees the Confederate 
soldier gave his parol, and pledged himself 
by every rule of law and honor to abide by 
the results of the appeal to arms. Faith- 
fully has he kept it. Faithfully have the 
Southern people lived up to that plighted 
word, — so faithfully indeed that it borders 
on impropriety to discuss it. In England 
the rancors of the Wars of the Roses, the 
feeling between Cavalier and Roundhead, 
had not died out in a hundred years; the 
animosity engendered by the Revolution of 
1688 was followed by more than fifty years 
of plottings, insurrections and warlike ef- 
forts to restore the Pretenders, — while here 
the greatest triumph which the Southern 
people have made is the manner in which 



they have kept the pledge. Completely 
have they put behind them the issues set- 
tled by the War, and with a "cordial and 
self-respecting loyalty" taken again their 
place in the family of States. Perhaps 
never before, in the history of any people, 
has the bitterness of a great struggle been 
so nearly obliterated and so speedy an ad- 
justment to new conditions made. 

The War settled the extreme and out- 
lying boundaries of great doctrines, but it 
left undetermined many problems within 
those limits. It adjudged against the right 
of Secession, but it left undefined the 
boundary line between centralization and 
States Rights. The centripetal and centrif- 
ugal forces are still operative, and the pen- 
dulum still oscillates back and forth. 

It settled the matter of Slavery, but it 
did not adjust the question of Race. It 
modified that problem, but did not solve it. 



What that question lost in intensity, it 
gained in complexity. 

Neither the North nor the South were 
responsible for this problem. The Slave 
trade began under the auspices of the Brit- 
ish Government at a time when it was a 
matter of course. Men at the North bought 
and sold; men at the South bought and 
used. So feebly had Slavery taken root 
at the North, where conditions were un- 
favorable for its spread, that the issue could 
be easily dealt with when the Race Problem 
began to loom dark and threatening. In 
the language of Mr. Beecher they could 
"pull up their poisonous weeds," but so 
numerous were the slaves in the South 
that we could not separate the tares from 
the wheat, and the problem remained to 
grow, — and to vex as it grew. 

In nothing is the fastness of this age 
better illustrated than in the rapidity with 



which we have travelled away from ancient 
orders of things. We think of Slavery in 
modern times as peculiar to the South, but 
the first speech Gladstone ever made in 
Parliament was in the interest of his father 
and other Englishmen who owned slaves 
in the West Indies. There are, no doubt, 
old men living to-day in Austria who were 
born in slavery, — white slavery ; and mil- 
lions in Russia, with blue eyes and yellow 
hair, started for the goal of freedom in 
1 86 1, abreast of the dark-skinned slave in 
America. These things were but as yes- 
terday. In the order of time, a few men 
will be living on this Continent in the year 
1950 who were slave-owners, and nearby 
will dwell those who were born in slavery. 
How short, then, in the life of a nation, is 
it back to the Proclamation of Emancipa- 
tion, — less than forty years, less than the 
span of a life, barely half of four score years 



and ten. In a period so short, how im- 
possible to expect the hereditary tenden- 
cies and influences of centuries to be 
reversed. 

The serfs of Austria and Russia were of 
one blood with their masters. By a ty- 
rant's hand they had been held down, and 
in the years following their emancipation 
they had to outgrow the degradation which 
slavery entailed, notwithstanding which the 
hopes of those who secured the freedom of 
the Russian serf have failed of fruition, and 
his uplift is still a prophecy and not a ful- 
fillment. 

But how essentially different is the Amer- 
ican question. When the ancestor of the 
Russian serf had reached a point where he 
was entitled to the rights of a civilized free- 
man, the African was a wild and untutored 
savage. As savages, under the express 
provision of the Constitution of the United 



States, they could be brought from the 
Dark Continent to these free shores as late 
as 1808. He reached our land a savage, 
and the slavery that was for the serf a deg- 
radation, was for him an education. How 
well those who trained him in this school 
discharged their task, I can best describe 
in the language of a gifted woman of South 
Carolina: 

"They had to train and teach a race of 
' savages who had never known even the 

* rudiments of decency, civilization or re- 

* ligion ; a race which, despite the labors of 
' colonists and missionaries, remains in 
' Africa to-day as it was a thousand years 
' ago ; but a race, which, influenced by 
' these lives, taught by these Southern 

* people for six generations, proved in the 
' day of trial the most faithful, the most 
'devoted of servants;" and in 1863, 

over our remonstrances and protests, was 



declared by others to be even worthy of 
full civil and political rights. 

The effect of emancipation upon the 
slave seems to have been rarely considered 
before the War. In reading the utterances 
of the leaders on both sides, one is im- 
pressed with their lack of forecast as to 
this question. The Southerner regarded 
emancipation as a dream, and hardly ever 
alluded to its effect upon the negro or upon 
society. On the other hand, those who 
stood for abolition, seemed to think that 
Freedom was a cure-all and that as soon 
as slavery was abolished, the African would 
not only be the white man's peer before the 
law, but his equal in attainments and pos- 
sibilities. 

And so he was freed from his master, 
without being freed from the burdens of 
heredity, ignorance and racial disabilities. 
What an appalling problem to have such a 



stream injected into the current of our 
national life ! Among us, not of us. For- 
eign in race and origin. Here against his 
choice and without our responsibility. 
Would that the War, in settling other mo- 
mentous issues, had likewise settled this. 

It is the fate of the South to face the 
same social and political questions that con- 
front every other section of the country. It 
is her supreme misfortune to have, in ad- 
dition, this race problem, which confronts 
no other section. But the issue is here, — 
the task has been imposed, and it is for 
this generation to contribute, as far as it 
may, to its wise and humane settlement. 

Enough of the feeling engendered by 
the War remains to make it impossible for 
us to be perfectly understood in this mat- 
ter. But the time must come, — I think it is 
rapidly coming, — when we shall receive the 
sympathy of the entire nation in our effort 

38 



to deal with this issue. How remote the 
apparent connection between our problem 
and Porto Rico, the PhiHppines and Ha- 
waii. And yet, just there lie the facts which 
make the Race question National instead 
of Sectional. History is quickly repeating 
itself. Without realizing it, Northern men 
charged with the duty of dealing with these 
newly acquired and alien races, find them- 
selves confronted with the identical diffi- 
culty existing here in the South. Their 
speeches justifying their policy read as 
though uttered by Southern lips, and fore- 
tell the day when our fellow citizens of the 
North will be able to take a more sympa- 
thetic view of the Race question at the 
South. 

In nothing have the principles of self- 
government inculcated in the American 
people manifested themselves better than 
this adjustment of the relations between the 



Whites and Blacks. Similar cases else- 
where have resulted not in sporadic cases 
of cruelty and riot and disorder, such as 
occasionally manifest themselves here, to 
the mortification of every good citizen, — 
but where conditions like these have existed 
between other people, it has meant war to 
the knife, revolution and extermination. 
Look at the Haytian Revolution, the Ex- 
clusion of the Chinese, the almost complete 
extermination of the Indians, the absolute 
extermination of the Moors by the Span- 
iards. The percentage of violence against 
the negro on account of race is less in the 
South than it is in the North, and the Con- 
federate soldier fought as much in vindica- 
tion of his treatment of the negro, as for 
any other of the many nameless factors 
which brought on the War. The South 
was accused of being a cruel and relentless 
slave-owner. He answered Uncle Tom's 



Cabin with the frank admission that there 
were, here and there, cruel masters, as there 
were in every nation cruel employers, but 
that, while it might be an anachronism, as 
a whole, the South rendered the institution 
of slavery patriarchal. And now, such is 
the general kindliness that the problem is 
is not so much the relation between the 
Whites and the Blacks, — although that is 
not without its difficulties and dangers, — 
but, rather, what is to be the effect of the 
negro upon our civilization ? How is he to 
be uplifted to a point where he can proper- 
ly discharge the duties of citizenship? How 
are his racial disabilities to be overcome, 
so that he may not always be a weight 
upon the body politic? 

We think that education is a cause. We 
forget that cause and effect in this regard 
are not at the opposite ends of a straight 
line, but that they lie in a circle, so that it 



is often impossible to tell where cause ends 
and effect begins. The most cultured peo- 
ple have the best schools, but the best 
schools do not always produce the most 
cultured people. Illiteracy is both an effect 
and a cause ; it feeds upon its own products. 
Illiterates. do not estabhsh schools, nor are 
they willing to attend them ; the illiterate 
must first be trained up to the point where 
he is prepared for schools ; he must be 
trained in industry, in agriculture, and in 
intelhgent cultivation of the soil. If there 
is any one particular in which the South 
must plead guilty, it is not that she has re- 
sisted its enforcement, but the Proclamation 
of Emancipation has been taken too literally. 
The negro has been given not only free- 
dom but license. He can only be elevated 
by education, — not the mere education of 
books, but the education that comes from 
contact with the superior mind, that 



comes from direction in the affairs of life. 
Being free to go he has gone to himself 
and we have not hindered him. 

And just here is the point at which we 
are wanting, both to our ancestors and to 
our posterity. In many parts of the coun- 
try, the land, to a large extent, has been 
turned over to the freedman. He is allowed 
to farm as he sees fit ; to waste the resources 
of the soil ; to skim over large areas, instead 
of being required by the owner to plant the 
proper crop, to improve the land, and to 
till in a husband-Hke manner, as is demand- 
ed of every tenant in England, Scotland, 
and Germany, and in the Northern and 
Western States. No landowner on the 
face of the earth would permit an ignorant 
tenant the destructive and awful license the 
Southern landowner gives to the negro. 

There is a much abused word which the 
story-teller has made odious. The "land- 



lord" has become the synonym of heart- 
lessness. But what a splendid word it is 
in its real meaning. " Lord of the Land," 
and, as lord, noblesse oblige, charged with 
the duty of direction as well as of collec- 
tion; bound to assist his tenant with in- 
structions and kindly advice; bound to see 
that the land which he received as an in- 
heritance from his father, shall be trans- 
mitted as a heritage of equal value to his 
children. The relation between tenant and 
such a lord of the land is mutually advan- 
tageous, — the tenant improving his own 
condition and that of the land, increasing 
his crops, helped by the advice and strength- 
ened by the kindness of the owner, and the 
landlord receiving the rents, improving the 
land, to the benefit of himself and his chil- 
dren after him. 

Here lies a homely solution of the Race 
problem. In its successful application will 
UOFG. 44 



be found the solution of many social troub- 
les. It will elevate the negro and multiply 
the resources of the land. It will tend to 
wipe out the stain of illiteracy. It will en- 
able us to appear better in the great math- 
ematical and statistical standards by which 
everything is measured, to our present dis- 
advantage. It will make our percentage 
appear better. As it is, the injection of the 
negro as a divisor in long division con- 
stantly reduces our average, for he is a 
divisor, but not an equal multiplicand. He 
makes us appear in all the tables, worse 
than we are. In the eyes of the world, we 
share his poverty. In the eyes of the 
world, he makes us appear iUiterate. If we 
would direct his labor, it will be the better- 
ment of all concerned. 

It was the tremendous and weighty say- 
ing of Michelet that '' History is the resur- 
rection of the dead." And if, in the spirit 



we have invoked, we can reverently imagine 
our dead, as clothing themselves with the 
gray, shouldering again the musket, gath- 
ering under their immortal leaders, and 
marching through the land for which they 
died, and if, with uncovered heads, we 
should stand before them to render an ac- 
count of our stewardship, I can imagine 
they would hold us responsible before the 
Bar of Patriotism for what we have done 
to the land which they had enriched with 
their blood and consecrated with their 
lives. They would ask: Where are the 
stately mansions and the smiling fields ; 
where are the forests and the clear running 
streams? And if, with pride, we pointed to 
cities more magnificent than any they had 
left, to palaces crowding the streets, and 
to buildings challenging the sky, to busy 
factories and to glowing furnaces, they 
would make answer that these we ought to 

46 



have done, and not to have left the other 
undone; they would not accept our excuse 
that their defeat had made forever perma- 
nent the bleakness throughout the country; 
they would tell us that a generation is a 
time within which, even as to the industrial 
effects of War, the bar of the Statute of 
Limitations must be interposed; that no 
people could be prosperous or happy if the 
soil be neglected ; and as a normal country 
life made them, the lack of it might un- 
make us. 

With beat of drum and blare of trumpet, 
they do not call us to march from our 
homes to battle against distant forces, but, 
with silent and impressive finger, they point 
to the more intangible, more difficult, the 
more continuous and persistent dangers that 
lie at our very door. With imperious voice, 
they summon us to fight against ignorance, 
and to beat back the rising tide of illiteracy. 



They charge us to diversify our products 
and to keep step to the great industrial 
march of the age. 

Can we not heed their lesson? Can we 
not see that not only in the midst of shot 
and shell, but in shop and store, in school 
or at home, in the field white with cotton, 
or rank with rustling corn, we can serve 
our day and Country? For always and 
everywhere, Patriotism is but one of the 
many names of Duty. 



48 



